Maya's Favourite- Potato Salad

 Maya is our dear Czech/Vietnamese friend who we serendipitously met when we walked to Bell Rock on Labour day this year. In spending time with this delightful young woman I learnt that her favourite celebration food is potato salad. When we talked about how they make potato salad at "home" we were amazed at how most of the ingredients were just the same as we might include here.

When Maya came to stay a few weeks ago I made this potato salad for us to share together. And it's true, it made it feel like Christmas.

My recipe is really just a list of ingredients, but you can easily add or leave out anything that takes your fancy. 

The first step is choosing good potatoes- not a variety that says great for mashing for instance- a white waxy kind is best. Peeled is fairly important. Potato salad has a strange texture if you leave the skins on. Even chopping is also useful so that the pieces cook uniformly. Just cover with water in a pot and bring to the boil then simmer until just tender. Strain and leave in the pot with the lid off to cool.

When the potatoes are warm sprinkle over some sea salt & ground black pepper.

Then 1/3 cup of honey mustard vinaigrette. adding the seasonings and dressing while the potatoes are still warm helps the flavours to soak in to the potatoes best.

I then added:

Lightly cooked asparagus pieces, finely sliced red pepper, lots of fresh herbs finely snipped up with scissors- lemon thyme, parsley, mint, coriander, onion weed are all good options depending on your own preference and what's in the garden or the fridge.

Spring onions are an important flavour here, or wild onion weed- so add a few of them finely chopped up.

1/2 a dozen boiled eggs, shelled and chopped.

Some diced ham or cook some bacon if you like.

A couple of tbsps of capers is great and several diced gherkins or other pickles. I like to add 3 or 4 Pepperdews- sweet/sour wee peppers in a jar from the supermarket.

You could also add olives, panfried courgettes or artichoke hearts- I buy those in large jars from Bin Inn.

The balance of flavours is in all the various components.  

Gently mix everything together with your hands or a large spoon making sure not to mush the

potatoes too much.

Last thing is the creamy dressing which could be your favourite mayonnaise or this yogurty one that works well too:

A good creamy Greek yoghurt is great. We like the Cyclops brand.

So perhaps put 1 1/2 cups of yoghurt in to a small bowl

Add: sea salt, ground black pepper,

1 dsp wholegrain mustard, 1 dsp runny honey, some chilli of some sort if you like.

Add the juice of half a lemon and 1 tbsp of olive oil.

Stir and taste and adjust the flavours until you're happy with it and that's it. Keeps well in the fridge.

Let me know if I've left anything out.

Have fun making up your own potato salad as you go along.

Catherine X